New Story: The Price of a Smile

I recently won The Writeoff Association's "A Matter of Perspective" short story competition (first place of 57 stories! ) with this tale, and below is the final product. It has been greatly expanded from its humble beginnings. I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

The Price of a Smile

Just to warn you, it's dark and spooky and sad. Enjoy!

Comments

[Titanium Dragon]

I still prefer the original title, The Price of a Smile.

Still, it is your story.

I look forward to reading the expanded version.

[Trick Question]

3227014
I prefer the original title too, but most ponies wouldn't get the twist meaning of it after reading the story. With the current title, it's a sure thing.

(EDIT: Reverted to the original.)

[Trick Question]

3227014
Also, I'm calling it now. I don't think it's going to hit the feature box, or even end up with a high like ratio, despite two weeks of editing and care.

Why? I just realized something about the competition which makes it different from casual reading: we feel obligated to continue the read. Most ponies aren't making it past the first chapter, and I'm not too surprised: it isn't obvious where the hook will go, and I doubt they trust it will be an interesting story (despite the bragging rights in the description).

[Titanium Dragon]

3227189
Bradel and I were actually discussing this before he had to go to sleep.

I think your biggest issue was that you released it all in one chunk; in the future, with multi-chapter things like this, you might want to consider releasing it a chapter or two at a time over the course of several days. 15,000 words is a big ask, especially from someone that people don't know; Zaponator got away with a 10k story because he just wrote Blink, but when I released The Butterfly's Burden, it was kind of a damp squib. If you have a good hook that gets people to want to keep reading, and have it be short enough that people will want to start reading instead of being intimidated by seeing "15,000 words" at the bottom, that makes a big difference, I think.

You also released it on a bad day, though you didn't really have any way of knowing that; Zaponator and I both launched stuff last night, and An Old Coot is still pretty fresh-faced considering how much heat it has, but that still should have left four vulnerable featured story box slots. Unfortunately, DuncanR, SS&E, and freaking Sharaloth of all people all released stories today as well, and DuncanR, Sharaloth, Zap, and even me to some extent may have diluted the srs bsns views today a bit, not to mention the views of the Writeoff Association (as I'm pretty sure that a lot of write-off folks follow all five of those people). Friday is also kind of a bad day to release stuff in general, unfortunately, because it has the highest number of released stories and the lowest number of viewers (which is a bizarre combination, but apparently accurate).

There are some other NEFARIOUS SECRETS I may share, but not in a public space (they wouldn't be secret at that point, after all ).

I will be featuring your story on my next set of "Read It Now Reviews", though, so that might help a little. I haven't gotten the chance to go through it yet (I literally just got back from dinner and was going through my messages) but I shall tonight, so you will have my sword upvote and views soon, at least. And Bradel mentioned that he tried throwing some red meat out out for you earlier on social media.

[Trick Question]

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Thanks.

I think Bradel will like it. Morning Sun doesn't like the changes, and I suspect you might not either (you ended up NR'ing my most popular story after liking the original which had just a few fewer words, iirc). It's hard to re-read something you liked when it's been edited, so it's a hard sell to TWA folks if the editing is extensive. Lots of new stuff in there.

But I like it. And isn't that what matters?

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OH DEAR LUNA NO IT DOESN'T IT'S ALL ABOUT THE UPVOTES WHYYYYYY

[Trick Question]

3227643
I appreciate the feedback! I'm not arguing below, just explaining why I did what I did.

I think the hook is too weak.

Agreed. It's also a problem because the first chapter is long and highly exposition-y.

you can’t say she recognises only one pony in the room when she knows two (what about Cheerily?)

She's referring to ponies in the circle she knows well. She already recognized Cheerilee as a friend (familiar face), and it's not until after she notices only Big Macintosh that Cheerilee walks over and sits down in the circle.

Twilight's face grew pale. This is unlikely for a pony.

This is show physics, which is part of the theme. If Luna can blush, Twilight can pale.

Please don’t use “thusly”. Especially in Luna’s prose.

I don't like the word, but as I recall it's used properly. It feels like a Luna word to me.

... Also “meta-information” does not sounds Luna.

Agreed, but I think it's justified. I considered another construction there, but Luna is also well-educated and brilliant; not merely archaic.

I have nothing much to say on the following chapters, except that I think I detected some self-insert… Especially the subject of the story, in the light of what you've been through lately… losing memories…

Not intentional, and quite different. Mine is like a super-mild anterograde amnesia, while the story is retrograde. It's harder for me to form new memories (not much, just a little).

[Trick Question]

3228827
I see! I'll fix it thusly.

[Trick Question]

3228827
There weren't any intentional self-inserts, I can promise you that much at least. But I'm always the characters I write, which is why Twilight and Luna and Pinkie come naturally.

[Trick Question]

3228827
As for meta-information, any spellcaster would need words for things like "meta" and "recursion". It sounds computery because she's a mage, and magery of the sort employed in FiM shares a lot of similarity with computing: it's precise, it involves algorithms, there's a lot of self-reference, spells can affect other spells (the definition of metamagic), etc. It doesn't make sense to me that even a thousand years ago FiM wouldn't have a prefix for self reference.

But that's just my silly justification.